Nuclear Energy – This is what we’re up against…
June 14th, 2010
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This ignoramus is the type we generally find on the “opposition” side.
Nothing angers me more than idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about walking around and talking like they have some kind of authority
Well, “Rick” let me first assure you that there’s no reason to worry about the nuclear plant at Chalk River, because there is no such plant. There is a research and isotope production reactor there, however. You know why it was allowed to run without the mandated triple-redundant cooling system? Because the reactor is quite important to producing medical isotopes and shutting it down would create a shortage.
Of course, it was shut down anyway when it sprung a leak and hence the world now has a shortage of medical isotopes. This wouldn’t be a big deal if either of the two replacement reactors built right nextdoor to it were online, but because of people like yourself, they’re not. It also would not be a huge deal if other countries had built more medical research reactors, but again, anti-nuclear groups have managed to stunt that, so now we’re reliant on mostly 40 year old reactors.
Pat yourself on the back, idiot.
Finally, repeat after me “I replaced the old cloudy water with new clear water.” That is how you say “nuclear” just like “new clear.”
This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Not Even Wrong, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 14th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Rick Mercer, the Mouth that walks like a man. Along with Don Cheery are major embarrassments to this nation. Why they are consistently given air-time to vomit their ill-conceived opinions on the rest of us is beyond me. If it’s any credit to us, most think they are ass-holes, and give what they say little weight.
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June 14th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
DV82XL said:
In the US, we call ours “Glenn Beck”
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June 14th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
This is the Rick Mercer Report. It is another CBC comedy show made by Canadians. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with criticizing misinformation.
The CBC has many comedy shows. Among them are various titles like “This Hour Has 22 Minutes”, “Royal Canadian Air Farce”, and the “Rick Mercer Report”. They are entirely facetious. Nothing of what they have to say is fact. It’s all made up beforehand. They are comedy shows that are meant to explicitly show the absurd views that some people take on current events.
Some people I know would say that they shouldn’t have television shows that produce such obscene hyperboles but I would have to disagree. I personally like these comedies because it lightens my day to imagine the fools that actually do believe these things.
Unfortunately, some very unintelligent people do take them literally at their words and use excerpts of their shows as “factual” information when in reality all that they have done is propagate the comedy even further.
None of it was serious. It’s all an elaborate joke.
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June 14th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Rick Mercer slips too easily between satirical comic and satirical commenter, and there is a difference. Unlike his mentor and predecessor Rex Murphy, Mercer has too high an opinion of his own intellect, and too low an opinion of everyone else’s. Murphy’s comedy was always just barely hiding a white-hot burning rage at how stupid we were all being. Mercer tells the dummies what they want to hear, while inviting those in the know to laugh up our sleeves with him at the unwashed idiots we have to walk among.
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June 14th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Since when is radiation good for you?????????
Nuclear power is killing our world and causing global warming.
Nuclear medicine???? I THINK NOT! RADIATION CAUSES CANCER NOT CURES IT! Cancer is cured by nutrition and natural rebalancing of the human body and our god given immune system
Nothing natural is about nuclear. It is full of poisonous radiaton.
Godbless Andrew Wakefield and the other truth tellers.
RAW, ORGANIC, WHOLE, UNMODIFIED, ZERO CHEMICAL FOOD AND ORGANIC BIOMASSAND WIND FOR POWER. = PERFECT HEALTH
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June 15th, 2010 at 12:20 am
Like flies to a honey-pot…
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June 15th, 2010 at 12:43 am
DV82XL said:
I prefer to think it’s Poe’s law in action; no one can really have their head up their arse that far can they?
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:04 am
Bahahahaha!
He said ‘Nuc-u-lar’ a few times there.
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Nelson said:
If you think miniscule doses of radiation are bad, why are you promoting it?(e.g. coal burning, which exposes people ~100 times more radiation than the safely contained spent fuel of the nuclear fuel cycle).
Nelson said:
Nuclear power emits far less CO2/kWh than wind, solar and hydro per unit of energy produced when you account for the hideous amount of “natural” gas wind and solar generators are responsible for burning.
Nelson said:
If you ever need to use medical isotopes to treat cancer or tracers to image some problem in your body; do me a favour; don’t. Practice what you preach.
Nelson said:
Cancer cells are too alike your own cells; the immune system doesn’t detect them; though it might be possible to stimulate the immune system to detect them with a ‘cancer vaccine’.
Cancer is caused mainly by combustion waste(e.g. particulates, PAHs) and your oxygen metabolism which throws off lots of free radicals and some minor things like retro viruses(did I mention we have vaccines for some of them?), smoked foods or charred foods, hexavalent chrome…
You might lower the risk factor for some cancers by some small amount with proper exercise and diet; but given that you’re demonstrably irrational and despise evidence based medicine it’s rather more likely that you’ll fall for some silly scam like mega-dose beta-carotene(an antioxidant that in controlled tests appears to increase cancer risk quite significantly).
Nelson said:
The Earth was made from intensely radioactive nuclear waste; you are made of nuclear waste. See all those elements higher than iron? They were formed by successive neutron captures; many were pushed right up about the neutron drip line in the r-process during a super nova.
Romantics like to call this nuclear waste “star dust” and other such silly names, but really, it’s intensely radioactive nuclear waste that has been allowed to cool for a few billion years.
Ever hear of the natural reactors in Oklo?
I’m not sure why natural would be good, but it seems to appeal to you for some reason; so there you go, perfectly natural.
Nelson said:
A fraud and charlatan.
Nelson said:
All food is modified; most of it drastically so. It was created by and for humans during millenia of breeding. The very same modifications that make food crops produce copious amounts of food for humans also make them vulnerable to weeds and pests.
Most major crops have a few ancestors in their family tree produced by mutation-breeding(which exposes plants to huge doses of gamma rays or mutagenic poisons in order to induce random mutations; then you select mutations that are useful or interesting for further breeding).
Zero chemical food doesn’t exist because plants are entirely made of chemicals. Organic food is a scam and uses more land, water, energy and pesticides. Rather than use safe, manmade pesticides in tiny amounts; organic farming use large quantities of “natural” pesticides like pyrethrene(broad spectrum insecticide, toxic to bees, very toxic to acquatic life), rotenone(would probably be banned if it was a synthetic pesticide; it is suspected of causing alzheimers in rats), and nicotine(not so bad for the consumer, but occassionally kills a farmer while handling the concentrated stuff).
Remember thoses mountains of cow-dung used as one of the main fertilizers in organic farming? Those are white-washed “synthetic” fertilizers that have passed through the stomach of a cow. As long as “organic” farming relies on this it is self-limited and good riddens.
Biomass and wind power is where we came from; we stopped doing that because we found less fickle and far more concentrated streams of energy. Unless you feel like killing a few billion people(you first) there is no way back there and good riddens. ‘Biomass energy’ deforested nearly all of Europe. It’s even more polluting than coal power in terms of particulates(which is the stuff that causes most of the deaths; from lung cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness).
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:39 am
Eh, Mercer’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is.
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:58 am
Yep, this guy must be a troll.
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June 15th, 2010 at 4:24 am
Why couldn’t the camera man stand up straight? He kept twisting the camera from left to right, presumably in an attempt to appear ‘edgy’…
Anyway, he started the video by saying “I’m pretty ignorant” then went on to prove himself right, so what’s the problem?
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June 15th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Why the laugh track? He doesn’t say anything funny.
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June 15th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Why so hard on Rick Mercer? This was less of a rant on NucULAR power and more a critisism of the government’s treatment of a whistle blower who was hired to keep on eye on just these kind of issues.
This is old news anyways, back in 2008 or 2009 I think.
Also the whole nuclear vs nucular thing, don’t get too hung up on it. Ol’ Rick is an East Coaster y’know that’s how thems speaks outs thats ways with thair cairs (cars) and thair hairbers (harbours) and their boots (boats).
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June 15th, 2010 at 8:49 am
I’m not sure why you’re picking up on really old CBC comedy clips on youtube. In any case, some context. Mercer’s “rants” are part of a political satire show called “The Rick Mercer Report.” This one was broadcast two and a half years ago. And for those who are dismissive of Mercer, he consistently pulls large audiences, including the largest ever audience in Canada for a comedy special for his “Talking to Americans.” He’s received more than 20 Geminis (Canadian TV awards), a Governor-General’s Performing Arts Award, a Sir Peter Ustinov award, several honorary doctorates, and is honorary colonel of a Canadian Forces unit (Mercer is a steadfast supporter of Canada’s military members).
At that time, the Chalk River issue was just becoming public. In essence, the issue was this: Canada’s federal nuclear regulator had prevented the facility being powered up because it lacked the necessary safety upgrades. Moreover, two reactors built to replace the 57-year-old NRU reactor were unable to be licenced by the regulator. At that time, the head of the regulatory body was fired, and the reactor powered up by act of Parliament.
Mercer was pointing out satirically the foolhardiness of having a carpenter (then-Minister of Natural Resources) and an economist (PM Stephen Harper) overrule a nuclear regulator.
I think it’s inaccurate ot blame Mercer’s attitude (or broader public attitudes) toward nuclear energy for the failure of the MAPLE program (two reactors built to replace the NRU). The MAPLE reactors had major issues with workmanship and with testing results that did not reflect the modelling done during design. Apparently the reactors were to have a “negative power coefficient”, but when operated during testing had a positive power coefficient. I don’t understand what that means, but my reading suggests that’s not a good thing.
To commenters 12 and 13: The camera style is a signature of the rant, and has become frequently copied. It’s also an outgrowth of the camera work of stations like CITY TV and Much Music in Canada. Also, it’s not a laugh track. The show is recorded live in a studio and the rants are played back to the studio audience.
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June 15th, 2010 at 9:37 am
Bob LeDrew said:
Mostly because a few of these clips are being posted on youtube (recently) to bolster anti-nuclear groups. Perhaps I’m viewing them out of context, but so are the youtube uploaders who are using them.
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June 15th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Bob LeDrew said:
Hmm, “necessary safety upgrades” for some highly dubious value of “necessary”. The remaining additional redundant layers of protection for the NRU were some pump upgrades associated with infeasible failure scenarios (eg. earthquake in geologically stable area), which were not clearly in the earlier requirement of the regulator. Parliament was taking a broader view of the public good than the nuclear regulator, which had fallen into an unrealistic view of the potential harm from this reactor, with no interest in the very real benefit.
Bob LeDrew said:
I wouldn’t blame Mercer or the public for the regulator’s failure to engage seriously with the commissioining of the MAPLE reactors. The best power/void coeffeicient is zero, and the MAPLE reactors showed that they were extremely close to that. Again this was (and is) a matter of unrealistic fears and demands on the part of the regulator.
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
RAW, ORGANIC, WHOLE, UNMODIFIED, ZERO CHEMICAL FOOD AND ORGANIC BIOMASSAND WIND FOR POWER. = PERFECT HEALTH
If so, then why are my Great-Grandparents not still alive? I am pretty sure they met all the requirements…
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Mercer might seem convinced that everyone else is stupid, but after “Talking to Americans”, I wouldn’t blame him. He certainly did some fishing to find the most ignorant people he could, but he found professors and leaders of society (IIRC there were two governors in the batch). There aren’t enough of those that we could assume that he could fish out people suitable for “Talking to Americans”.
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June 15th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Bob LeDrew said:
My understanding of the power coefficient is that it relates to keeping the reaction going. You need to add some power to start the reaction, if the coefficient is negative when you stop adding power the reaction fizzles out, this makes a meltdown impossible. If the coefficient is positive than it starts a feedback loop and unless you do something to stop it you’ll get a meltdown.
Every other MAPLE reactor they built had a negative power coefficient, the new ones didn’t. This was relevant in two ways.
1) They included the negative coefficient as a documented safety feature, this feature probably wasn’t necessary for safety (lots of other safeguards) but was still missing. It like saying “this car will be safe because it has ABS, a crumple zone, and airbags”, only to find out the brakes aren’t ABS. Maybe a crumple zone and air bags are enough, but you were promised ABS.
2) No one could ever figure out why the coefficient was positive. Even if the coefficient isn’t necessary you’d rather they understand the plant well enough to know why it’s positive.
With the safety commissioner my understanding is she shut down the old plant because some of their safety features were non-operational and she felt her hands were legally tied.
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June 16th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Aaron said:
Except a car is a production item that they make many of and therefore know it will be like the one before and the one after. The MAPLE’s were similar to others but basically a first of the kind. It’s not terribly uncommon to have some minor numbers discrepancies in such a complex undertaking. You will notice in the Space Shuttle launches they talk about the engines being at “104% throttle” which is because it turns out the engines were able to produce more power than the original design spec stated.
I’d say a more fair comparison would be to say that the car was supposed to get 30 miles to the gallon but instead got 29.87 mpg or something.
The power coefficient was intended to be “approximately zero” which it is.
BTW: The feedback loop is not infinite. The reactors still have a negative void coeffecient. That is to say, if the reaction ever got to the point where it was actually causing the water to boil, the voids would be enough moderator reduction to stop it from going any further.
Of course, under normal conditions it should never reach the point of boiling.
All the early CANDU reactors have a small positive power coefficient.
I’d still gladly sleep with my bed right next to one of the MAPLE’s while it is running at full tilt.
Aaron said:
Fuel rod deformation.
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June 16th, 2010 at 12:57 am
drbuzz0 said:
The car was a metaphor so it’s not a perfect comparison, but it was a safety feature. From what I can tell it’s not a major issue but when you say “we’ve performed a safety assessment based on X, Y, and Z”, then Z turns out to be false you need to take a second look.
Part of the blame may lie with the AECL as I don’t think they ever tried to get it re-certified with a positive PCR, though I don’t know how easy that would have been.
drbuzz0 said:
According to this article they never did narrow down the issue though it sounds like it was probably some manufacturing defect.
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June 17th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Nelson said:
Can you not all see the irony tags around Nelson’s post? Even a troll would not lay it on that thick – brilliant! Why is the American idea of satire like being beaten to death with a wet fish? True satire should be sharp, like a Samurai sword, the victim should be seen to walk three paces before falling in half.
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June 17th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Alan Barnard said:
It’s true that satire has a huge cultural component, and depends to a great extent on context. The trouble with Nelson’s post is that we get any number to idiots posting similar rants that are dead serious here, and it is hard to tell without some indication, when someone is just pulling our chain.
I will note that most of those that post nonsense as a joke, usually turn up again themselves to laugh at us for falling for it – Nelson, hasn’t.
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June 17th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
DV82XL said:
I believe the concept you refer to is known as Poe’s Law.
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